It's a Dog's Life
by emeralddarkness
Summary: Life? It's gone to the dogs. Incomplete
1. Chapter One

It's a Dog's Life  
emeralddarkness  
**Summary:** Life? It's gone to the dogs.  
**Rating:** PG/K (May possibly be raised to PG-13/T later, but no higher)  
**Disclaimer:** No, I don't own Inuyasha or anything affiliated. Anything you don't recognize, however, is mine and mine alone. NO STEAL.

Before I start, just wanna say that hi, I'm not dead, nor have I forgotten this story. It does, however, desperately need two things. One of them is rewriting, which I'm doing right now. The other thing is a beta reader. Please. Really.

For those of you wondering about which ship this story is sailing with, I can only tell you that I'm not sure. At the moment there isn't anything, except implied canon pairings, but know that this might change if the characters decide so. Notice the _might_, there is nothing definite. No slash, however, and I don't think either Rin or Naraku-gumi are gonna figure much.

One final note: I'm not going to post a disclaimer up at the top of every chapter anymore, so just take the above for the entire story, mk? kthnxbai

- - -

Chapter One  
_Kagome_

It started in a semi-normal fashion. What, you ask? What started in a semi-normal fashion? When is _any_ part of my life even partially normal? Why am I telling you this? I'll answer… well, most of those in one, which is that this first small sentence is (somewhat pathetically, to my views) probably the best that can be said of my day. And the really sad thing? The reason that it was semi-normal was not because I got to wake up to the teeth-grating buzz that my way old alarm clock makes so that I could crawl out of bed, slither into my uniform and trudge off to school. Oh no. That's for other people. Frozen waffles? Scrambled eggs? Psh, they're for weaklings. No, because I'm an intrepid shard hunter, _semi-normal_ means being woken up before the crack of dawn by a small fox demon, trying to ignore said demon because there was frost on my sleeping bag and it was (as previously mentioned) before the crack of dawn and there being frost on the ground and then being unable to fall back asleep, as any sane person would try doing, because of what sounded like a tree suddenly falling nearby to the accompaniment of much swearing in a loud voice. And then what sounded like another tree, crashsmackCRUNCHsplintersplinterCRASHbang. And more swearing.

Yup, that's semi-normal for me. Wow, don't I have a fun life?

"Kagome!" A small, urgent whisper was my cue to wakefulness.

"Ngh. Five minutes."

"_Kagome_!"

I finally cracked an eyelid and, after a few seconds, managed to identify the tiny form that was shaking my shoulder pretty insistently for such a little guy. "Shippo?"

"Come on, we have to move!"

"Ngh," I said again, attempting to lose myself in the folds of my sleeping bag. It was too early for this and my sleeping bag was lovely and warm and I wasn't feeling good and there was frost all over the place-

"Kagome!!" Is it horrible of me to wish that I could ignore him? But I couldn't, he sounded too worried. And if he sounded that worried, there might be a cause for it. There had _better_ be. But then… Naraku _had_ attacked the other day and everyone except me and him had been hurt. Miroku was almost paralyzed from poison and Sango was only slightly better; Inuyasha and Kirrara had been affected by something else, something that hit demons harder then normal. I think. I had a fever when they tried to explain – which is, incidentally, the only reason Shippo and I had escaped. I'd been sleeping somewhere nice and safe and far away at the time, Shippo had been guarding me. Anyway, the point is that if he sounded this worried there could well be a reason for it.

There had better be.

"Wha'is it?" I muttered from inside my cocoon.

"Come on, you have to move!" he said pleadingly.

"Donwanna."

"They're fighting, you have to!" And then came the first tree, snapCRASHcrunchsplinterSNAPthunk. And then the swearing.

"Inuy'sha?" I mumbled, more in disbelief then anything else.

"Yes, come on, we have to move, he smelled Sesshoumaru-"

Now me, I blame the fever. There aren't many other reasons that I can think of to explain why, at the mention of that name, I struggled out of my nice, warm sleeping bag not to do the intelligent thing and make tracks in the other direction but to stumble off_ towards_ all the crashing and banging and splintering, all to the accompaniment of a string of curses that would have been impressive to most anyone not used to Inuyasha. I wish I could tell you what I was thinking, but I can't because I'm not really sure. It was something like 'I'm sick you jerks, now go fight somewhere else so that I can get back to sleep.'

Like I said, I blame the fever.

As I struggled through the trees and Shippo trailed me, protesting and trying everything he knew to get me to turn around before finally vanishing (presumably to go get Kirarra, in an attempt to keep me from killing myself), I was complaining bitterly to myself that I hadn't been born in America. America was a very nice place with no magic wells that took you back in time to the stupid Feudal era where there wasn't any cold medicine or soft beds or readily available chicken soup and where your rest was disturbed on frost-covered mornings by youkai and hanyou decking it out in a forest on the outer fringes of nowhere. Nope. None of that. England didn't have that problem either.

Stupid Japan. Only I liked Japan. I just wasn't sure if it was worth the grief. _Not stupid Japan, then,_ I told myself. _Stupid __**wells,**__ they're where the problem is. Yes, stupid time-traveling wells._ There was that cleared up. You know what would have been nice? If someone had warned me. I'd like to be able to warn whatever poor shmuck comes after me, that's for sure. Of course, if I managed to get all the shards and get rid of the jewel she might not have to worry about anything. But there are two small points against that – the first, THAT IT'S APPARENTLY IMPOSSIBLE, and the second being that this cold was going to kill me; watch. I mentally composed a letter to the poor girl.

_Dear reincarnation, please do __yourself__ a favor and move to France.  
Your friend, Kagome  
PS, stay away from dry wells._

Satisfied with this, I mentally addressed it and sent it off. Well, _someone_ needed to warn her. Because honestly now, wasn't enough enough? But oh no, on top of coming out of a magic well at a time in which there were no such things as hot baths, it also had to be a time in which you had to go endlessly, _endlessly_ collect stupid shards of a stupid jewel and half the guys were prettier then you were!

Really, what is up with that??

At this point I had come close enough to be about 90 sure that Shippo had been right. I could make out enough of the individual words to know – probably – that Inuyasha was swearing at Sesshoumaru. Sesshoumaru was (so typically) apparently not responding, or at least not loudly enough for me to hear. I swear I wanted to deck him. I mean, it's one thing to be a prissy, stuck up, insufferable, stoic prick as he is – I suppose he can't help it. But couldn't he just give up on the stupid Tetsusaiga? HONESTLY!! He can't even hold the stupid, stupid thing!

Most days I'm glad that I pulled it out of the little stand in Inuyasha's dad's skeleton, really, I am. But today, right now, at what was probably five in the morning (I mean, it was still _dark_) as I was staggering through a frosted forest with a fever towards a stupid fight over a stupid sword that I had stupidly pulled from its stupid pedestal, well… let's just say I wish I had never seen it. Yup, it could have just stayed locked up down there forever and I would have been perfectly happy.

But, what's done is done.

Unfortunately.

I managed to hold onto the last few lingering shards of my hope, the hope that maybe everyone had made a mistake and it wasn't Sesshoumaru and things would be easier to resolve then they seemed, right up until I reached the edge of the clearing – rapidly expanding as more trees went ripsplinterCRUNCHcrashbang. This hope was, of course, extinguished as soon as I actually managed to get there since the universe isn't nice to me like that. It was indeed Sesshoumaru, floating in the light from false dawn on the breeze like a snowflake. Yea, a snowflake that could kill people. He had the same affect that cats did when you watched them move – he was so graceful and so fast that he looked like he was moving in slow motion. _Oh,_ your brain would think when you saw him move, _I have plenty of time to get out of the way,_ at which point he'll have removed your head, leaving you to look up at the rest of you and wonder when he'd managed to do that.

He looked over towards me with that same, eternally bored look that he always wore, dodging backwards from Inuyasha without apparently paying any attention. This was when I remembered that I was standing there in nothing but my rubber duckie patterned flannel pajamas and the shoes I'd shoved my feet into upon rolling out of the sleeping bag, most conspicuously without a weapon of any kind.

Oh crap. Well, there went any maybe-plans that I might have had. They all flew right out of my head.

He apparently noticed me and looked mildly perplexed. I don't honestly blame him. "Oy! Sesshoumaru! I'm the one you're fighting!" Inuyasha yelled, jumping forward once again to swing down Tetsusaiga, but Sesshoumaru simply glared at him as he jumped further towards me. I couldn't help remembering that the last time he'd done this I'd nearly ended up as a puddle of toxic goo. This, of course, helped with the reaction.

"Hey!" I yelped, and reacted instinctively. The demonic power (which had suddenly increased, HELP) felt abrasive and, in response, my own power flared. Now, I wish to repeat this again because I have no desire to be blamed for this; _it wasn't my fault_. Yes, Kaede had been attempting to teach me how to control my power, but _attempting_ was the key word of that sentence. I hadn't actually _learned_ all that much yet. Which explains some of it.

My power (which, as mentioned, I'd been working with recently – or that's the only reason I can give for it flaring at all as it certainly hadn't done so in any of the previous fights I was in. I think) spiked, which I suppose I also blame, because if not for that I'd have never had the idea. _Maybe_, I'd thought to myself in that delirious way you start thinking when you have a fever, you know? _Maybe if I just purify some of his __youki__ then he'll go away._ How, realistically, this would have worked I'm not quite sure, but I had a fever and I didn't have my bow and my power was spiking anyway.

So anyway, I grabbed my power and threw it off with some attempt at control which I honestly think _would have worked_, if not for the fact that it was _right_ then that his youki flared _again_. And then _my_ power, I suppose in response, jumped all out of control. You want an example? Ok, think of a garden hose. Then take that garden hose and attach it to a fire hydrant, then turn it on full blast. Guess who the hose is? Hah hah, that's _riiiiiight_

My power ripped out of me like an avenging angel, like a volcano erupting with enough force to blow the cone off, and started eating up his youki. And eating. And eating. And it just kept going and going, trying to destroy the threat, for what felt forever and ever and no, stop, I would go mad – and then something even worse happened. I felt my power start to run dry, and still while his youki raged around me, slowly closing in.

I couldn't see it, but it looked green. I couldn't smell it, but it smelt of flowers and of acid – a bright, caustic scent laced with a poison sweetness like honey. I couldn't taste it, but it was somehow both bitter and far too sweet to be born, still with that acid tinge. I couldn't hear it, but it buzzed. The one thing that I could do was feel and it lapped against my skin like sandpapery cat tongues and I couldn't let it go, though I tried, though my power was down to the dregs. I couldn't pull my power back into me, away from the green sea pulsing around me, the sea that my power was rushing towards and trying to drain and basically, I was in trouble.

Frantically I tried to pull our powers apart, to separate mine from his and get mine back inside me, mine back where it belonged, and was unable to.

I felt the green, caustic, sweet/bitter, roiling sea (much diminished but still very large) close in around me and over my head as I pulled at it more and more and more, whether I wanted to or not. More and more and more. I wondered what happened when my power ran out, if I would crumple, utterly defenseless against this pale prince. The cold, apparently, wouldn't have time to kill me – Sesshoumaru would beat it to the punch.

It didn't quite happen that way.

_I had no idea he was so strong,_ were my last real thoughts before I crumpled down to the ground, my own miko energy gone but the youki still flowing like poison into me.

- - -  
_Sesshoumaru_

Though it is somewhat unseemly to admit as well as unpardonable for me to have let my attention waver so, I must say that I had been somewhat distracted while traveling. I tell you this to set the record straight, as it is the only reason I came close enough to that idiotic half-brother of mine for him to so much as detect my presence. Not, of course, that I need to make accommodations to him or any other being, but I had a headache and was tired and simply did not wish to deal with him. I had been lately dealing with the kind of difficulty that bred migraines; the North was attempting to quietly expand their boundaries over land that was rightfully mine (significantly, beyond the minor border skirmishes that always occur), as it had been since I'd taken it. They had not, however, done anything that I could call them on, which meant that I had two choices. The first was call war early on, marking myself as the aggressor and lowering my chances of any substantial aid. Or, at the very least, aid as prompt as might be wished or aid free of bribery – I was powerful enough that my enmity was a stupid thing to garner for such a small thing as refusing your ally the aid promised long ago. And then there was the other option, which I was currently employing, of endless rounds of diplomatic meetings with the Kitsune leader of the North.

War was beginning to sound more and more attractive. After all, war had been declared for less reason then this. Yes, war was sounding good.

I am a dog, and at my core I love simplicity. The kitsune as a whole revel in tricks and doubletalk and clever disguise. I abhor clever disguise, and because of this I'd been suffering more and more headaches over the past few months as I sat through meeting after meeting, each one seeming to accomplish less then the last one. And in each one, progressively as I felt my headache get worse, I'd been wishing more and more that I'd simply traveled up and killed those who challenged me. I had the power, and I did not need to answer to anybody. I might have been overwhelmed if I tried this by myself, true enough, but I might not have been. And it might have been nice to kill the lesser demons; killing such is often remarkably therapeutic.

I was thinking all things through, as well as the fact that I am Sesshoumaru and don't need to inconvenience myself so for anyone since I am powerful and I do what I wish, and that was when my dear younger brother apparently sensed me and came to blindly attack.

With a headache pounding behind my temples, it was hardly a distraction I wished for. If I'd simply been frustrated it might have been a wonderful release, but at the moment I only wished to sit down in a dark room and do nothing, which was why it was highly frustrating. Being attacked when I didn't wish to be attacked was made yet more unbearable by the fact that he had attacked me for no reason _within my own boundaries._ He was some distance from Edo, after all, well inside the West, and though he stank of poison and fatigue and injury he'd decided to try and kill me. Apparently before I could try to steal his sword or kill his companions; as if I would lower myself. I will not go out of my way simply to step on ants unless there is a reason to, and as for the sword… though he does not deserve Chichue's heirloom, he had no reason to suppose I would attempt to take it from him when I cannot touch it myself. Such logic had apparently failed him, however (not an unusual occurrence), leaving him to try to attack me and swear when he failed. Loudly.

If not for the fact that he'd been downwind of me, I would doubtless have been able to avoid the mongrel altogether. I would have smelled him out long before his weak nose managed to find me, and as I didn't wish to see him I simply would have avoided him; it would have been simple enough. It was, however, too late for that, and therefore I simply dodged his usual ungainly attacks.

I was pondering how to incapacitate him (I honestly didn't want to kill him right then, only to be allowed to get home) when a girl stumbled through the trees, smelling of illness and anger. She was wearing some outlandish outfit, though I must admit the cloth appeared to be of good quality. But then all of her clothing seems to be this way, which has always made me wonder at the poor choice of clothes. Such excellent, fine cloth deserves to be used in some kind of worthy garment, and the green thing that she usually wore hardly even deserved the name.

I looked at her curiously, wondering, but perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. She always seems to be doing some outlandish thing or another. This, however, seemed to be more so then usual. I moved closer to investigate, but that motion seemed to alarm her. Wise, I suppose. I felt her power stir uneasily as she yelped and backed away while at the same time Inuyasha yelled behind me.

"Oy! Sesshoumaru! I'm the one you're fighting!" If 'fighting' was the right word. Still, his brash voice annoyed me, and my youki flared in warning as I shot a cool glare over towards him. This simple action, however, had unexpected consequences. I felt the miko's burning power flare wildly in response to my own and then attack it, latching onto my power (instead of, as would have been more usual, my person) to begin eating away at it like a drop of strong acid working its way through a bolt of cloth. My youki flared more strongly in response to the attack, of course, but that only seemed to make her attack grow. I was surrounded by a wave of purity that was attempting to eat away at my own energy.

Her powers were undeniably quite impressive, but I was not unduly worried. Midoriko was the only miko yet born who could try subduing me with such tactics. Any other would burn herself out in the attempt. With this knowledge, I simply waited. And waited. And waited. And while it took some time I did eventually begin to feel the girl's power fizzle out. Admittedly, it was much longer then I'd first supposed – she was untrained and ill as well. It made me wonder what kind of power she boasted. Still. Not enough. No, not enough.

The last dregs swirled and were gone, and I waited for her collapse. Inuyasha would doubtless blame me for it which was unfortunate simply because it would involve more yelling and fruitless attempts to hit me with the Tetsusaiga, but it wasn't as though there was anything that he could really do unless I allowed it, which I wouldn't.

I hadn't moved before because the girl's power would have burned me if I tried, I didn't move now simply because I was waiting for the inevitable, for her collapse, before I turned and sent Inuyasha to join her in the land of unconsciousness. But the unthinkable happened. She wavered and fell, as expected, but the tug on my youki did not lessen.

"Soul-shattering iron claws!" Inuyasha had apparently decided that he'd waited long enough and was attempting to attack me again. I, confused as well as annoyed now, the headache still throbbing behind my temples and scraps of what would have been alarm, if it had been anyone else feeling it, stirring in me decided that I'd had enough. I jumped high, summoning my whip of youki and lashing with it, catching Inuyasha on the back of the head with enough force to knock him across the clearing and into one of the trees. _Crunch_ went yet another tree as Inuyasha fell to the forest floor, unconscious, but I didn't particularly care. My whip flickered out before I intended it to as I grew yet weaker.

I could still feel my youki being tugged from me and towards the girl, who had collapsed.

Impossible. Her power was gone.

It was fading, onwards and onwards, leaving me with less and less and less-

Her power was gone, I could not sense it. I was sure, _so_ sure

I leapt again, but this time stumbled and fell back to earth – except that, of course, was impossible because I was Sesshoumaru and _this Sesshoumaru did not stumble-_

Her power was gone, I was sure of that for there was no burning dancing across my skin but my youki was still fading, leaving me weak – only that was impossible as well because _this Sesshoumaru was not weak-_

I could feel my senses growing dim – eyesight, hearing, smell, all of them fading as my power was drained like blood from a wound, but the girl was knocked out and drained of her power, impossible, it was utterly impossible. She did not have the strength to kill me and was not doing so because _this Sesshoumaru did not die-_

I felt my power, down to the dregs itself now, stir and scream but it too was dragged from my body and it felt like it was pulling my veins with it, carrying it in white hot wires that had been inserted into my abdomen and pulled out in chunks.

_Impossible,_ I thought once again but the last of my power was going and then it was gone and I was left to sink down into the welcoming blackness, still wondering How. How, How, How, How, How.

- - -

So whaddya think?

A bit of Japanese that I have/might use/d, for those of you who don't know:  
_Hanyou_ – half breed, as in the case of Inuyasha  
_Youkai_ – the closest English equivalent is 'demon,' but the two terms don't match exactly because of the differences in culture.  
_Youki_ – a youkai's energy, 'demonic power.'  
_Chichue_ – something along the lines of 'honorable Father' or 'Lord Father,' a more archaic and respectful form of 'Father.'  
_Hahaue_ – something along the lines of 'honorable Mother' or 'Lady Mother,' a more archaic and respectful form of 'Mother'  
_Kitsune_ – a fox demon and trickster. Kitsune can grow multiple tails – the more tails one has, the more powerful it is. They delight in playing tricks and pranks.  
_Miko_ – priestess with holy powers, a shrine maiden  
_Inu_ – Dog  
_Osowari__ –_ the 'sit' command used for dogs  
_Taiyoukai_ – a powerful youkai  
_Edo_ – the approximate area Tokyo is today, and about where Inuyasha's village (probably) was.

If you'd like to beta, please drop a review. And even if you wouldn't. I love reviews.


	2. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**  
_Kagome_

When I woke up from this _delightful_ little nap, the first thing that I thought was that I was freezing. The second thing was that I hurt all over. The third thing, which immediately jumped to the front of my mind and shoved the other two things to the side as soon as I opened my eyes, was the fact that there was a very large and very sharp sword about an inch away from my nose. I swallowed and tried to breathe very shallowly, eyes fixed on the metal point.

"Demon," I heard someone say. Now, it took some effort (I'm sure you understand, given the situation I was in) but I finally managed to tear my gaze away from the tip of the sword and look up the length then further, to the face of the person who was holding it in such a threatening position. It was very familiar.

"Wha-?" I began saying, but he didn't let me finish.

"Here, I'll make it simple. You just tell me where Kagome is and I won't kill you. Sound good?"

"Inuyasha!" I squeaked, my eyes automatically flowing back down the length of the blade to the business end, still hovering far too close to my face.

"What are you anyway, a kitsune?" He snorted as if to express his emotions about kitsune. "You almost smell human, but not enough to fool me."

"Inuyasha!" I squeaked again, "what, have you gone nuts?? Stop it!"

He growled. "Don't play dumb. What, you think you look like her or something?"

"You really have gone – Inuyasha!!!" This last word was a half scream as he began dropping a very large, very transformed Tetsusaiga on my head. And then I dodged. It was just that simple. I thought that I didn't want to be hit and my muscles tensed and moved as the world blurred and changed and I wasn't there anymore.

Ok, so apparently I went insane without noticing.

_WHAAAAAAAAAT?_

I froze, which seemed to me like a good idea. I mean, when the world blurs and just _zings_ by when you try moving, staying still sounds like a good idea, don't you think? Yea, I do too. Just don't move and try to figure out what you're doing….

Maybe I wasn't nuts. Maybe I'd just hit my head when I fell down and all this was some really strange, concussed kinda hallucination. That could be. Or there was another, less attractive possibility now that I thought of it – that I was dead because Sesshoumaru had killed me after I fell over for… I dunno, infringing on his dignity or something when I tried purifying enough of his power to subdue him.

Now that I think of that, why in the name of cheese didn't I just try to purify _him_, hmm? What was all the crap with the 'without youki he'll go away! It will work, yea!' I think I was nuts even _before_ the world started reacting the wrong way. Only… I dunno, I guess I don't really like the idea of killing him. _Why_ this is I'm not quite sure, but some of it may stem from the fact that he himself is so sure that he is invincible, that it would be… well, it seems like it would be cruel to try disproving him. Unless, you know, he was trying to kill me at the time and I had no choice.

I really am nuts.

Or then there was, once again, the possibility that I was dead. I mean, I knew I had a fever when I hit the ground and my nose was running and now I didn't seem to have either of these problems. Only I still felt hot, kind of, but it wasn't an unnatural kind of hot. Except I was hot even though I was cold and- arg, this doesn't make any sense whatsoever. But, moving on from inexplicable body temperatures, I certainly didn't have a stuffed up nose. I can tell you this most assuredly – things actually… well, I don't want to say that they smelled more or whatever because they weren't stinky and that's generally what that phrase means. But… oh jeez, the _smells._ They seemed way more VIVID, way more THERE, if this makes any sense at all which it probably doesn't but I don't even know if there are words to describe it – they seemed more _real_ then they had before, like a scent was suddenly something tangible – something you could see and taste and feel, something you could eat or drink.

My hearing was funny too, but not in that sounds were more real or anything. There were just so many more of them; I could hear what seemed to me to be everything.

Does hitting your head do this? Can a concussion augment the senses? Vision is supposed to go whacky, isn't it? My eyes had gone weird (I suppose to match everything else, haha) but not wavy or anything. I didn't feel dizzy or like I was going to throw up (as I believe generally happens to the concussed), things just looked a bit different. Like… I dunno, like someone had taken a television and adjusted the color just a bit sideways and sharpened the focus and it had been way off before, so suddenly you had this intense, strange sort of image that was an everyday thing. Or maybe that happens when you're dead.

"Am I a ghost?" I asked, not quite sure who I was talking to. Inuyasha growled and I squeaked and the world _blurred_ again and I was standing in quite a different place, but this time Inuyasha didn't wait for me to stand and think. If that's what he did before, in a way it seemed like it took ages for me to work everything out, in another it seemed like it had only taken about a millisecond. He raised Tetsusaiga in a motion _way_ too familiar and then swept it down, slicing through thin air. I yelled and was suddenly _very_ glad that I had new, improved super-speed – it meant, after all, that I did not end up sliced'n'diced into lots of itty pieces by _air_, of all things.

"Stop it! Sit!" And _that_ at least worked – Inuyasha crashed to the ground like a stone and left, (I'm sure) a nice Inuyasha-sized dent. Which was, you know, I'm sure not the most pleasant of experiences for _him_ but it cheered me up considerably. Because here was one bit of the world that apparently hadn't gone mad. Or, at least, no madder then it had been back before because, honestly, calling any part of my life sane has got to be a kind of insanity in itself.

"Sit!" I said again, just because I could, and the Inuyasha-shaped dent got a little deeper and I brightened even more. I heard some growls and curses trying to come up through the muffling layer of soil and grass and rocks and leaves and spider-webby frost and it made me laugh. Not quite sure why, but it did.

This was, of course, when Shippo rode in with the cavalry. Or Kirarra at least – cavalry perhaps seemed a bit strong of a word for a single fire cat. She leapt in, Shippo clinging to her ruff, then opened her huge, fanged mouth and narrowed her red eyes and _yowled._

"Inuyasha!" Shippo yelled sounding somewhat teary, then he'd jumped off Kirarra's back and run over to where Inuyasha lay and then _positioned himself in front of him._ Yes, let me repeat that, _Shippo_ was apparently guarding _Inuyasha_ from _me._

Ok, so maybe I did go nuts. It seems the likely of the two explanations of either me or the entire world having lost its mind. And then (and I swear I'm not making this up) I _smelled_ Kirarra get closer. Or maybe it wasn't all smelled, but I know that smell is one of the senses that helped me arrive at the conclusion that she was closing fast.

So I dodged. Again. She snapped those saber-tooth fangs _right_ where my neck had been a few seconds (ha ha, did I say seconds? Make that _milli_seconds) ago, then when I wasn't there she screamed in frustration. Have I ever mentioned that there isn't much I've ever heard (if anything) that can compare with the sound of Kirarra screaming? It sounds like how I've been told a puma screams – like a woman. Only take that frightened scream of a woman and add in a whole new layer of bloodthirstiness and frustration. She looked stiff, but her back right leg looked the worst. This was when I remembered she was injured, but that didn't stop her trying to pounce again.

"Jeez, Kirarra, stop it! Don't move anymore!"

She bared her fangs and hissed, but she smelled tired and hurt and sick and I just couldn't take it anymore. Not just the fact that she was trying to kill me, just… everything. So I sat down and put my head in my hands. This seemed to confuse both of them. Not so much Inuyasha, who was struggling to his feet and yelling about how he would _kill_ me, but at least Kirarra quietened down. Shippo, for his part, seemed kind of surprised. What, that he wasn't dead? Or at least really hurt? Honestly, what did they take me for?

"I should still be in bed," I moaned into my hands. "It's too early for this."

"Whatever, witch," ( this being Inuyasha – only he didn't say 'witch'), "now what did you do to me?"

"What do you _mean_ what did I do to you?"

"Don't play dumb!"

"Jeez, can't you give things a rest?"

Apparently not, as I was forced to sit him again. Shippo and Kirarra stared. Kirarra, I think in confusion, turned back into a kitten and hut her paws on her nose then her face under one of her very busy tails. I think Shippo might have liked to do the same. Inuyasha, meanwhile, was peeling himself up on the dirt and swearing some more.

"How do you keep on _doing_ that??"

I was so confused.

- - -  
_Sesshoumaru_

When I woke up, I had a headache. I suppose it was understandable, but I was still disappointed. Sleep usually seems to help. I never seemed to get enough sleep – there was nearly always _some_ pressing problem or another that I could have put off or ignored but which only would have bred trouble later on, then I'd have had to go and deal with that. Bred trouble is invariably larger then the sire, so it tends to make things less complicated to cut them off at the root rather then waiting. You can't ignore a trouble forever, as if you don't find it then it will end up finding you.

Chichue certainly taught me that with his death, if nothing else. Rumor had spread of his weakness – and he was weak, taking Izayoi to his bed as he had. That weakness had killed him in the end; though he was still an excellent general, though he was still a powerful demon, the taint of human association had spread throughout him in the rumors and once the belief is gone the battle is half lost already. Quite a bit to being in power and staying in power is no more complicated then convincing people that you are powerful, and Izayoi proved the opposite. Humans are weak little mortal things, their lives brief as a may flies; so easily broken; loyalties so easily and so often changed. To allow one to hold such power over you… for that you must be weak as well. Weak things never survived among the youkai, be they of the lowest or of the highest order. There is always someone waiting for weakness.

Weakness, as I had just shown. Weakness in allowing my power to be sapped by a mere chit of a girl, weakness in allowing her to bleed me so dry that I stumbled, that I fell, that consciousness deserted me. As I'd already shown by allowing the girl child Rin to accompany me.

Rin had made me neither weak nor soft as I had proven time and time again, but there were always more who foolishly believed that it had and tried to take what was mine from me; the Kitsune tribe of the North was only the latest of these. There was much more unrest, certainly, then there had been before I had somehow allowed this human girl to crawl into my life and my heart and rearrange everything until she had a space to settle comfortably into.

Of course, the fact that no one save Jaken knew just how indulgent I occasionally was of her did not stop the whisperings, the whisperers who said that I was treading in my father's footsteps. Naturally I'd shown them that they were wrong, but if this new story ever got out – if it was known that I had been subdued and brought to heel by a priestess, shown the same weakness that my cur of a half brother had….

Once they stop believing that you are immortal then no matter how strong you are, no matter how fast, no matter how skilled with blade or claw, they will come. No matter how many times you prove yourself, still they will come. Rumor is strong, and once it takes root it is next to impossible to dislodge from the minds of the people. I could prove that I cared nothing for Rin by killing her – a thing which would certainly silence the whisperers, but I do not wish to and I always do what I wish. The news of a miko subduing me, however, might prove more difficult to dispel. The miko herself wasn't the problem.

I clenched my teeth and cursed the girl. If it was ever known…. You may succeed in battle a thousand times, but you only need fail once. As I had.

Impossible, really. This Sesshoumaru did not fail. There were certain things that I Did Not Do and fail was the first of them. I Had Not. Of course. Impossible.

At least I was out among the trees, which was all well and good as evidently I needed more time to properly recover. Because I was among the trees perhaps they didn't know I had fallen. My limbs felt as slow and lethargic as though I were moving through honey, my senses of smell and hearing were pathetically dull. Scents, in particular, hardly seemed to exist anymore. Unless I'd been somehow pulled into a reality where they _didn't_, I couldn't quite make out how that could be. Then again, of course, I'd recently been quite effectively drained by a major magical attack. Knowing this, the fact that my senses were dull and my movements lethargic and heavy wasn't really worrisome. I was lucky to still be alive, all things told.

I hated having to rely on luck.

I pushed myself slowly up, feeling like my bones were rusted iron. The last time I could remember feeling this weak had been when Tetsusaiga had nearly killed me, when Rin had first found me. At least it was better this time. At least I could move. The entire wood – or, more likely, the entire world – seemed wrong, however, as though someone had tilted it a few degrees to the side. And then I opened my eyes and things became worse. My vision felt unfocused and fuzzy. It was a dizzying effect, and it was lucky that no one was there. The headache grew worse, amplified by nausea, and I allowed myself to sink back to the ground and close my eyes again.

That miko… it was amazing that she'd managed to leave me this weak. I couldn't be this weak. When you were weak then you were taken advantage of; that under your protection was taken or destroyed. I couldn't be weak. I forced myself to open my eyes again, forced my rusted joints to bend and push me to my feet. I leaned against a tree and felt the earth somehow pulling me closer, making me heavier, than it ever had before. I closed my eyes again.

Finally, somewhat adjusted (though I still felt as though my ears had been stopped up with wax and my nose with cotton – worse, as I'd still have been able to smell the cotton and smell past the cotton), I opened my eyes again to examine the forest. The colors were off – they were duller, there were less, things seemed less sharp then they normally were. What in the name of the Earth and Sky had she _done_ to me? At least my bones didn't feel quite as rusted anymore, which was certainly an improvement. One thing of many…. I still didn't feel anything close to normal, so while there was improvement it was minimal.

I heard a yell that sounded like Inuyasha from the clearing behind me. I turned towards the movement, still feeling clumsy and heavy and dull, my bones dragging at the earth. It was strange that I felt so heavy, since I also managed to feel hollow to my core. The feeling was disorientating.

The tearing crash that was Tetsusaiga.

"Osowari!"

The scream of a fire cat.

I should just leave, but the question was _how_? Walk? At the rate that it felt like was the fastest I could walk, it should only take a few months. What had the priestess _done_ to-

I had been pushing myself off the tree and my hand had scraped across the stump of a twig broken off next to the trunk, scraping jaggedly across my hand. I raised it in front of me and examined it. A thin line of blood was welling slowly from the broken skin. There were two things odd in that; the first was that such a little thing could have drawn blood from me at all, the second was that I could not smell my own blood. Even if I couldn't, however, there was doubtless someone that could. I raised my hand to lick the blood from my palm and then froze as my sleeve fell slightly down my arm.

The markings usually present on my wrists (or wrist, after Inuyasha had removed my other arm) were missing. I blinked and looked again. Gone. They were gone. Suddenly the blood seemed very unimportant. I looked at the rest of my hand then turned it over. Markings, gone. I had no claws to speak of, only soft blunted nails. It was only a side effect of the miko's power, surely.

I turned my hand back over to look at my palm again, and the thin line of blood was still there. The skin was still broken. I hadn't healed.

Surely. Surely it was simply her power, the fact that my own youki had not recovered yet.

I ran my tongue over my teeth, gently examining my canines. Blunt. Dull. I had lost my fangs.

The pathetic nails on my hand remained unchanged, did not begin growing longer and sharper.

I began slowly, almost fearfully (fearfully? Me?), to examine the rest of myself. There wasn't a mirror nearby, of course, or even a still pool so I could not examine my face, but as for the rest….

My clothing was the same, fine white silk and a pattern of flowers that was today in a deep red (normal enough) but the bone armor I wore and my keel seemed to have gained some substantial amount of weight. Perceptions. It was my hand that showed the difference, and my teeth.

My hair stirred in a slight breeze, and at that my blood truly froze. I thought I'd seen out of the corner of my eye – but no, it could not be. Gingerly, as though any sudden motion might break reality, I gently captured a silky strand of hair and drew it forward so that I could more fully examine it.

Inky black, as black as night, as black as a true human's hair. And the texture, while still silky and well maintained, was far coarser then it normally was.

Impossible. It was impossible.

My hand moved up to my ear, running over it. The familiar tip was gone, replaced by the smooth, curving shell that a human had. I ran my tongue over my fangs (teeth) again, far more roughly, almost hoping for my tongue to catch and tear on the point of a fang because it would prove that the world had not gone mad. But no. There was no taste of blood, there was no pain. I flexed my hand automatically, but I had no poison. I did not need to test anything to determine that – I would normally have been able to feel it singing through my veins. Poison should almost have been dripping from the tips of my claws at this point.

Somewhere, in the back of my head, I heard a scream.

I began moving, almost without knowing it. Once I stopped, however, I knew very well where I was.

There was the clearing in front of me, there was a kitsune child and a fire cat, there was Inuyasha climbing up slowly from the ground, there was a female demon sitting on the ground looking horrified and holding her hands away from her. I was instantly annoyed by her, for what reason had she to be wearing such an expression?

The miko! Where was the miko? What had she _done_ to me? I was deaf, half blind, had no sense of smell to speak of, pathetic little blunted things at the tips of my fingers which could by no stretch of the imagination be called claws, rounded ears, no poison, black hair, and was pathetically weak. And had black, coarse hair. My mind seemed to keep traveling back to that. Not human, I was not human and would not elevate that idea by so much as thinking it. I was not human. I am Sesshoumaru, Taiyoukai of the West.

Inuyasha looked to me.

"Where is your miko?" I asked him. I didn't exactly enjoy talking to him under the best of circumstances (which these hardly were) but… well. This was information I needed.

It was, however, the stranger-youkai who spoke. "Oh no."


	3. Chapter Three

**Chapter Three  
**_Kagome_

My mouth felt weird.

Now wait, I know what you're thinking. _This girl things of the strangest things at the strangest times._ Something along those lines at least, right? I thought so. But honestly, it did. Very, very strange. It felt fuller then it normally was, if that makes sense. Unnatural, you know? And everything felt confused enough that this, somehow, was the point upon which I fixed. My mouth felt too full somehow, as though someone had figured out how to make my teeth a little thicker.

I ran my tongue over them, as I had so often once I'd finally gotten my braces off, and nearly managed to amputate the tip of my tongue.

Ok, fine, that's a bit of an exaggeration. But not much of one.

"Owowow!" I yelled, feeling blood begin to fill my mouth – great, it always seemed to take so long for your tongue or whatever to stop bleeding, and normally I hated the taste of blood. Things were not normal at the moment, however, as was evidenced by the fact that the blood… well, crazily, I almost enjoyed it. Me! (Still only 'almost' enjoyed it, as it kinda was my own blood and that was icky, but… even so.)

Color me slow, but I still hadn't figured it out.

I spat out the blood, poked my tongue out in an attempt to see it… and the bleeding had stopped. Right, well I hadn't healed too fast or anything. Nope.

I felt the tip of my tongue, but it was perfectly normal; you'd never have known it was bleeding if you hadn't seen it yourself. Still, I remained more cautious then I had been before. My teeth still felt weird, but I wasn't gonna risk slicing my tongue open again, _that_ was for sure. I raised my hand to gently run a finger over my teeth instead before freezing at the sight of it.

Claws. There were claws, showing faintly pink in the dawn light, at the ends of my fingertips instead of fingernails.

No way.

My hands twitched automatically, and a few fine drops of poison (it smelled bright and toxic) drifted off and landed on the ground, where they sizzled and killed a few perfectly innocent plants. Now, under the circumstances, I don't find it all that unreasonable to have freaked out. In a big way, I mean. I threw my hands to my front, trying to figure out how to STOP whatever was going on (i.e. – sudden spraying of acidic poison) before I killed myself or Shippo or someone. And tried to figure out what was going on. Trying to figure out what was going on sounded good.

Super speed, super senses, poison fingertips and fangs. I think. I ran my tongue over my teeth again, very lightly this time, and yup. Fangs.

OMIGOSHWHATISGOINGON?

I couldn't be a youkai, I just couldn't. I was a miko. One thing miko did not do (one thing _humans_ did not do) was turn into youkai. They _just didn't._

I really was nuts, wasn't I? That had to be it; I'd known it all along. I never really went back in anything, let alone time, I was really locked up in a nice padded cell somewhere that I couldn't hurt myself.

It was actually quite a relief to think this. And then came a voice out of the blue.

"Where is your miko?" someone asked, voice cold and haughty. I looked over, even though they clearly weren't talking to me, and froze.

"Oh no." Except… wait. Something was wrong with this picture.

There was a man standing on the edge of the clearing; and while he was wearing Sesshoumaru's armor and clothing and swords and that pelt thing, while his hair was about the same length and his expression of cool distain was the same, it simply couldn't be Sesshoumaru and that was fact. Sesshoumaru, you see, had white hair and golden eyes and this stranger had black hair and eyes of a purple-gray, the same color Inuyasha's turned when he was huma-

No way.

"What the… it… I…" I said, intelligently. He glared over, eyes narrowed in a look that was classic Sesshoumaru no matter who he was.

"I don't believe I addressed you, youkai," he said.

Omigosh. No way. This was _not_ Sesshoumaru. Only… only that was _such_ a Sesshoumaru thing to say. And the look. The look that accompanied it was so classic Sesshoumaru that (given that this guy so very obviously _wasn't_ him) Sesshoumaru himself must be dead, as random-stranger was channeling him. And he looked like him. Did I mention that he looked like him? Only without the stripes on his cheek or the moon on his forehead or the claws at the ends of his fingers or, _oh yea,_ the right color hair or eyes.

Lock me up now, _please._

"How do you keep sitting me?" Inuyasha burst in, his tone one of extreme frustration. "Kagome's the only one who can do that!"

"Duh, why do you _think_ I can?" Possibly not the best thing to say, but I had _claws_ and _poison_ and Sesshoumaru's identical twin (human) brother was glaring at me and I was hoping that it 

wasn't somehow my fault. Not that I could see why it would be, but… you know. Oh no. Ohnoohnoohno. Anyway, compared to all of this Inuyasha's questions as to how I could subdue him were… kinda pointless. Especially as my brain was already on overload. And that left me somewhat short with him. Fear can do that.

He growled, but managed to keep from moving this time. "Quit playing tricks, Kagome is human."

"I know!" I half-wailed.

Random-human seemed to loose his patience. "Who are you to ignore this Sesshoumaru?"

"Oh no oh no oh no!" And I was really wailing now, none of this half wailing nonsense. "No! You can't be Sesshoumaru! Oh, wake _up_ Kagome, wake up wake up!" I used my forearm to hit myself on the forehead, still not much wanting those nails too close to my eyes. "Wake up, wake up…."

"Feh, don't be stupid," Inuyasha scoffed, voice scornful, and something in me just went SNAP! All right, normally I like him. I was a bit too stressed at the moment, however, to like anyone.

"SIT!" I shrieked. "SITSITSITSITSI-"

"Kagome!" shouted Shippo as Kirarra sat up and yowled. That snapped me out of it again.

I felt tears start to fill up my eyes – _great_, just _perfect,_ I hate crying – and, at that, I honestly almost might have run away. I think I would have, but the Sesshoumaru who wasn't Sesshoumaru seemed to anticipate me.

"Don't."

I didn't.

"I'm _not_ a demon, I'm _not,_" I insisted as the world in front of me blurred. I sniffed. "I'm not one!" No one said anything for a second, then the stranger who said he was Sesshoumaru spoke.

"And what, then, are you?"

- - -  
_Sesshoumaru_

The stranger youkai was babbling some kind of nonsense and Inuyasha was ignoring me. I sighed and wished to rub my temples. Still, I managed to restrain myself. It wasn't fitting that a lord should show such signs of distress at such petty provocation.

Things got interesting for a while (while they were ignoring me, of course, and who _were_ they to dare ignoring _this_ Sesshoumaru?) when the demon began screaming the command to 'sit' at 

Inuyasha, and the mutt was pulled rather forcefully to the ground, if the size of the hole he made after so many repetitions was any indication.

Interesting, amusing – certainly. Another time I might have laughed. At the moment, however, I did not really care. I merely wished to know what had been done to me and how I might have the effects reversed. I was busy and had not the time to waste- a new thought suddenly occurred when I thought this, one that made it further imperative that this spell immediately be removed.

I was the Lord of Western Lands; one of the Lords of the lands ruled by the cardinal points of the compass – possibly the strongest, certainly the youngest. But those lands are mine only as far as I can defend them. And now I was weak. I could almost feel myself grow pale.

The West was the traditional home and holding of the greatest of the inu youkai. The West, which had been held by my family for time nearly out of mind. The West which my father had defended and almost lost for me. The West, which I had guarded and upheld for the past two hundred years, ever since Chichue had died. Been killed. Fallen.

He had been weak and he had fallen because of that and _I_ was currently weak. Even after he had died, after I had seized control of the West, there had been many who tried to attack, thinking that I was as weak as my father had been, that I shared his weak blood. It had taken years and years for them to learn otherwise.

And now I _was_ weak.

Youkai society was fairly simple; if you couldn't defend a thing, it was taken from you. It didn't matter what it was – a meal, a territory, a mate, your own life. If you could not defend it then someone would take it. Currently I couldn't even defend myself, let alone anything else. And the West was already being nibbled at by hungry neighbors. Where one is strong and one is weak, there is little room for argument. And now I was weak. I seemed to keep coming back to that.

The lands that my family had held for so long and protected so well were out of my control, and there was nothing I could do about it.

The stranger suddenly interrupted my thoughts. I was almost grateful to her.

"I'm _not_ a demon, I'm _not!"_

I simply looked at her. How could she seem to care so much about something so petty as _race_ when I had just effectively lost my family holdings and was now merely waiting for the details to be finalized- It did no good to dwell on it. Besides, this Sesshoumaru would not display that weakness even if it _was_ now there. I made my voice appropriately bland to answer her. Normally, of course, I probably wouldn't have replied at all. At the moment, however, I wanted to avoid the knowledge of what I was thinking of.

Shock – but ridiculous, shock was for inferior beings.

Was I not now one of them?

"And what, then, are you?"

"And you're not Sesshoumaru, you _can't_ be!"

I started to loose hold of my temper. "And who, in that case, would you suggest that I am?" I had neither the time nor the patience to deal with her at the moment, and I couldn't even hasten the conversation with her death any longer.

"Oh crap," she moaned, "this is all my fault…."

Finally I looked at her a little more closely. "Why?" I asked.

"Please, please wake _up_ now, Kagome…."

My eyes narrowed slightly with suspicion. Could it be…. It if was, then she would deal with this or suffer the consequences.

_Weak._

"Miko, what have you done to this Sesshoumaru?"

The demon looked up at me, azure-colored eyes wide. "Crap," she said eloquently.

- - -

Just so y'all known, Sesshoumaru is being a brat and this story is doing new and unexpected things and so I'm not quite sure when I'll be updating again. Soon, hopefully, but I can't tell you 'next week' or anything like that.

Because yea. Kagome is fine, but Sesshoumaru doesn't like playing nicely with the other children.


End file.
